Saturday, January 28, 2012

Early morning commercial notes...

Apparently, prospective customers of Colonial Penn life insurance trust Alex Trebeck a lot, and probably consider him a nice young man. Although, considering the target demographic, constantly repeating "...and I've been representing Colonial Penn for ten years..." is a questionable tack. "Ten years? I've been president of the mall-walkers club & neighborhood shuffleboard team longer than that!"

Saw a Newt Gingrich campaign ad. During the Rachel Maddow show. You'd have to open a Big Ed's Pig & Pit in Riyadh if you wanted to throw money away with less effect. (Either that or it's a clever ploy to reach GOP voters who monitor the enemy freqs. Newt is supposed to be the smartest guy in the room, after all.)

Bobbi's Theory of TV Products: If they offer to throw in a second one free, it is definitely garbage.

The forthcoming sporting contest in our fair city has local car dealers struggling to find a way to capitalize on it without actually speaking the trademarked words. One is offering a lucky customer a pair of tickets to "the real big football game in Indianapolis!" I thought another had actually uttered the expensive shibboleth, until I looked at the words on the screen and saw they were announcing a "Super Bold Sacrifice Sale". Ah.

15 comments:

Joe in PNG
said...

Is it just me, or are both Newt and Mitt running the exact same ad with the names reversed? The only thing that accomplishes is convincing me that everyone in the race is a lying, greedy, puppy aborting cockweasel.

And I find it funny that right now each is calling the other a lying, greedy, pupply aborting cockweasel... but in a few months one will be describing the other in super flowery happy bunny positive words and phrases.

A more likely explanation for the Newt ad on MSNBC is that he contracted to run it on NBC, the broadcast network, but the contract fine print (which nobody ever reads, natch) allowed them to run it on another of their channels if all slots on the broadcast network were full. Being MSM, they carefully arranged things so that that contract clause was triggered, and tossed the ad where they hoped no one significant would see it.

Not how it works, WW. Networks are regulated six was from Sunday over political ads, and watched like hawks by both "sides," who are of on accord when it comes to getting the best deal for their advertising. Nope, somebody on the PAC actually bought time on MSNBC and very possibly that exact time.

You've got to admit that the 0600 Saturday Maddow slot is probably dirt cheap for the budget, and I can't be the only libertarianish type watching it at that hour because the weekend version of Fox & Friends is even more distressingly brain-damaging than the weekday version.

I swear to Vishnu, Fox's morning show looks like a parody of a conservative morning talk show you'd see in a dystopian Verhoeven near-future SciFi flick.

Since the most likely reaction of the average Rachel Maddow viewer (or Rachel herself, for that matter) to a Newt Gingrich political ad would be eye-bulging, stroke-inducing rage, this could be a clever attempt at voter suppression. You can't tell me he isn't capable of it.

Throwing one in for free accomplishes several important IRS-related goals.

One, it establishes the unit price as the price at higher than the cost per unit to the customer.

Next, it writes off an identical unit cost as promotion, a cost of doing business. That keeps the books looking good for the IRS.

Then, it doubles sales. Instead of most of your customers ordering a $3 cheese grater, you sell the $6 cheese grater with a freebie. The customer can't pare you back to the one item for the price for that item -- because the price is for only one in the first place.

This doesn't work at most grocery and other stores that you actually walk into; they will cheerfully sell you one can of beans for $1.45 when the sign clearly states two for $2.90, because in person you just look at them and ask if you look stupid. But stores still post the prices as 3 for $0.99 because some customers will pick up three that day.

It is all a tax dodge, and manipulative of the (disrespected) customer.

Then again, Florida's primary is just a few days away, so the nasty stuff is getting piped into every viewing device in the household here. Hopefully the nonsense will die down a bit once the primary circus leaves town next week.